Showing between Friday 14th August and Sunday 13th September 2009 @ Weapon Of Choice Gallery, Bristol

The Weapon Of Choice Gallery on St Michael’s Hill is a very small, pretty cool venue and I headed down to see Bristol native Jody’s exhibition, which, like the gallery, was smaller than I expected, consisting simply of eight large pieces. The best of these is in the window of the gallery, raising expectations of the works inside.

The theme of the show is portraits, highly stylised spray-painted pieces which aim to show the dark underside to the air, brushed media and fashion portrayal of beauty. The pieces show sexy women and chiseled men with an urban edge, both who are perfect beauties apart from their macabre red and blank staring eyes, bleeding lips and partially visible skulls, presumably indicative of the very real, but well hidden mortality that underlies our aspirations toward beauty as set out by the fashion media.

The women are in stockings and Basques, or staring out with faces contorted in ecstasy, or giving what would be ‘bedroom eyes’ if their eyeballs had not been blotted out with spray paint. However, while the pictures are undoubtedly striking and will no doubt appeal to the stylised gothic crowd (I’m thinking the sort of people who love films like Van Helsing and Queen Of The Damned), the effort at macabre and sinister art is obvious, contrived and has been done plenty of times before. There was nothing subtle or thought provoking about the pieces, but rather they are as glossy and cool as the media representations they attempt to satirise and the aim at the surreal came off as a bit of a cock-up in proportion.

There was nothing new to consider if you are genuinely interested in artistic expression but as I said, the pieces are striking, pretty cool and worth a look if you want a bit of original urban art for your glossy, gothic walls.

www.weaponofchoicegallery.co.uk

Natalie Burns